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Some Beginner Tips for Writing a Book (writing a book) Before you begin your book writing adventure, you must research your idea and see if it will fly. Who is going to read it? Who are you trying to appeal to with your words? You must have a general idea of who your intended audience will be. Check out other books. Is there a book already published that resembles your book? What will make your book unique from theirs? If there are similar books already out there, what is going to make your book different and make people want to buy it? If you are still reading, then it is safe to assume that you have your idea under control and are ready to more on in writing a book. Decide on a schedule that is best for you, one that you will be able to stick to. It will be very frustrating to you if have unrealistic expectations and then are unable to stick to them. Your schedule should begin before your research and carry through to the book being ready for publication. Make a detailed outline with the main plot, events leading to that plot, and explicit detail about the characters. By having more information about the character you will be able to become them as you are writing. By having background on them, even if it is irrelevant to the story, it may help while choosing their actions, dialogue, and feelings through out the book. An outline is also a good reference point to come back to double check your timelines and details. You may want to turn of you editing software for your first draft. While writing a book the first draft is when you begin meshing the plot, the characters, and everything together. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation can be fixed later. Remember books do not necessarily have to be written front to back. By writing different chapters or events it may be easier for you to come back and connect them later. Sometimes having the words on the paper and reading will make it easier to fill in the blanks. You are on a role and rough draft is finished. Now is the time to read it. When writing a book reading the rough draft will allow you to make sure that there are no errors in the timeline, that plots link with the characters, and that it all makes sense and flows together. Once you have accomplished that turn your editing software back on. It is time to fix your grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. Now put you book aside. Let it sit for about two weeks or so before you pick it up again. This will give your mind time to be clear and fresh. Now read the book again. Does it still flow and make sense? Do you need to add something or change it? Now is the time. Choose someone to proofread your book for you. If at all possible you should hire a professional editor to do this. But if you cannot ask a colleague or maybe someone else you know with a writing or English background. While giving professional advice they will also be able to offer you and unbiased opinion. They will be able to see if there is a jump in the timeline you didn’t notice or if you had a character in the beginning and they just disappeared. The last thing to do while writing a book is creating the final draft. The final draft should be error free. This is your last chance to change anything before it goes to the publisher. Now is when all that time you spent writing a book comes together to make its trip to publication.

Communication Key to a Better Work Environment Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carole. On Christmas Eve, poor Bob Cratchit, who is working late again, spends his day working up the courage to ask his boss, Mr. Scrooge, if he can have Christmas Day off from work to spend with his family. When he finally does get up the nerve to ask, Mr. Scrooge lets forth a tirade over lazy people using Christmas as an excuse to have a day a off from work. This fictional story unfortunately rings true for a lot of people who have to work up the courage to ask for things from their employers. An employee who has to feel about their employer the way Bob Cratchit felt about Mr. Scrooge is not a very happy and productive employee. To get the most of out of your workers, you have to create a much more hospitable working environment. To create a better working environment, keeping the lines of communication open is absolutely crucial. How does communication work in your office? Do you get the impression that everyone is walking around on eggshells around you? While this kind of fear from your employees may be good for your ego in some senses, it is really bad for your business. When your employees don’t feel like they can talk to you, you will lose control over what is going on with your business. You may be the boss, but your employees are the ones who are actually on the front lines. To know what is really going on out there, you need your employees to communicate honestly with you. If they feel that you are unapproachable, they will hide problems and concerns from you, and you won’t be able to act to fix them. You can’t expect to run your business with half of the information about what is actually going on, and so your business will suffer for your “mean boss” routine. There are still other problems with creating an office environment in which your employees feel like you are unapproachable. In general, there will be a dark cloud over the office when you are around. The stress will keep employee morale low, and employees with low morale are employees with low productivity. Besides, who wants to work hard for someone they cannot approach or who doesn’t show they any respect? Shutting down those lines of communication will definitely affect your bottom line as employees “phone it in” because they don’t feel invested in making your business a success. If you want a better working environment, you have to improve the lines of communication. If there has been a communication breakdown in the past, take the time to address it with your staff. If you staff is small, talk to them each one on one, letting them know that your door is always open and that you want more regular communication with them. If you have a larger staff, schedule a meeting to address the issue. Weekly office meetings are a great way to keep communication channels open and swap ideas in the office environment. If weekly meetings are not feasible, find some way of touching base with your staff on a regular basis, either through weekly emails or a weekly newsletter. Also, you should encourage your staff to communicate with each other. Sharing information among the staff is a great way to generate fresh ideas and fresh approaches to problems. If your office is suffering from a communication problem, make nipping it in the bud a priority. The pay off will be more productive workers and a whole lot less stress. Who knew work could actually be a pleasant place to be?

Staying Computer Safe while Searching for Freebies on the Net Who doesn’t love the idea of getting something for nothing? Free stuff can bring a smile to anyone’s face, and the Internet is destination number one when you are looking for cash in on a few freebies. The downside of free stuff online is that if you aren’t careful, the free item could end up causing plenty of headaches and heartaches, not to mention a lot of cold, hard cash. If you want to score with free stuff online, make safety your number one priority by following these tips. First and foremost, treat your personal information like its cash. That might sound a little dramatic, but anyone who manages to steal your identity online is after one thing, and one thing only, your money and any addition money they can grab by cashing in on your credit. Protecting your name, address, credit card number, bank account number, phone number, social security number, and so on and so forth when you are registering for free offers is the first step to making sure you don’t get hustled when you’re just trying to enjoy a good freebie. That means that if you are asked for some personal information that you don’t feel comfortable handing out, let the freebie go. Likewise, make sure the site from which you are getting your free stuff has a privacy policy and that you know it, understand it, and can live with it. Speaking of that site that is handing out the free goods: just who are these people? If you were walking down the street and a shady looking person said they would give you a free DVD player if you followed them, chances are you would run the other way. Online, it is hard to tell the legitimate people from the people looking at you like a free lunch, but there are a few red flags you can look out for. Does the website look like it was thrown up in about 5 minutes, full of clip art and bad spelling? Is it hard to find information about where the website is registered, or where the business the website is supposedly promoting is registered? If the website purports to be affiliated with a certain brand you know, does it really look like it is, or does the logo look different/colors look off? If you can’t get a reasonable feel for who are dealing with online, don’t deal with them. Red flag number one? Asking for too much personal info should send you running. Another way to protect yourself is to build a virtual fortress around your computer. The net is filled with people who know how to walk right into your virtual home – your computer – and flip through everything you have on there, taking whatever they want. Many of these kinds of hackers draw you in by creating phony freebie websites. The way to keep them out is to keep your computer on lockdown. Make sure your firewall is stronger than you think it needs to be, and make sure it is always updated. Also, make sure you have antivirus software on the patrol for you and that you keep this software updated as well. Last but not least, keep those passwords in the vault, and make sure they are extra strong. No freebie website has any reason to ask you about the passwords for your accounts so don’t give them away – and don’t give them to anyone else online for that matter. Also, if you’re using your birthday or child’s name as password, don’t. Sure, it isn’t as easy to remember, but your password should be a random word and contain a collection of numbers and symbols as well. This will give you the extra layer of protection to make sure your online house is in order when you cash in on the freebies.